IT appeared Chinese whispers had infiltrated the greater Asian region after expats living in Tokyo told me they’d heard (through the Japanese kiwifruit vines) John Key’s Government was going to stop foreigners buying land in New Zealand.
I was confused by this, and told them they were misinformed. I thought those rumours were an internationally misinterpreted byproduct of the media uproar and public debate surrounding foreign investment in Crafar farms.
On my return home, I looked into it. After hours spent scouring news reports, I was thoroughly confused. It no longer seemed far-fetched that the New Zealand Government was going to prevent foreigners buying farm land.
I made some enquires and received a non-committal response from a spokesperson for the Prime Minister.
They confirmed Finance Minister Bill English’s review of the Overseas Investment Act would look at the speed genuine applications for foreign investment were processed at and also clarify definitions of land under the act, in particular sensitive land.
More than 5ha of non-urban land is currently classified as sensitive.
How they would do this was unclear as, the spokesperson said, it would not be simply a matter of restricting the number of farms or the hectares of land.
It suddenly seemed ridiculous that in Japan, I was frustrated and confused by the mixed messages we had been given over land tenure to return home and realise the process here was just as unclear.
The lack of ability to sell land there has resulted in people walking off land and moving to the city. In Japan, many New Zealand delegates felt there were communist or socialist undertones to their farming systems, and their desire to keep as much as possible Japanese owned.
Back home, with time to reflect, I realised if you were a Japanese person on an agricultural tour here, our land systems would appear equally confusing.
We have government owned farms, Maori land, Department of Conservation land - all Not For Sale and then there’s Bill English’s project, sensitive lands.
As I spoke about in my earlier blog, “The culture of agriculture”, for rice to have a role of cultural and spiritual significance, and for the government to pay for this seemed a bit far-fetched for many in the New Zealand rural community.
Yet, public outcry at Crafar Farms being brought by foreigners has been enough to make our supposedly pro-foreign investment leaning government; publicly pretend (at the very least) they are going to consider stricter guidelines on overseas companies buying up rural New Zealand. Many have called for government intervention.
The Green Party’s pushing for farm land to come off the foreign ownership catalogue completely.
It dawned on me that here in New Zealand, while we may not be seeing the cultural significance of a product of farming such as rice, we too are beginning to believe there are aspects of farmland ownership that are more important than price, profit or productivity.
Perhaps the Japanese agricultural philosophy is born from spending hundreds of years on a piece of land. Their relationship to agricultural land did appear quite similar to Maori.
But the real questions I have are: Is non-Maori New Zealand’s system of farmland ownership and sales modern or centuries behind? In New Zealand are we moving towards having a localised system of farmland ownership? And do we want this?
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* Rachael recently visited Japan as part of a NZ agricultural delegation, paid for by the Japanese govt.
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